Revered for her moving autofiction, the Italian novelist Natalia Ginzburg depicted families snared by the tragedies of their ordinary lives. Yet there was nothing remotely ordinary about Ginzburg’s own life as a writer, editor, anti-fascist and stateswoman. So much of her story remains a tantalizing mystery: whether in her writings or interviews, she collapsed the walls between memory, history and fabulation, leaving us to imagine what happened.
Now, in the first biography of Ginzburg written in English, award-winning essayist Thea Lenarduzzi paints a rich portrait of the beloved author, one which echoes her experimental, multi-perspective novels. Through fresh interviews, archival research and exquisite imaginative skill, Collapsing Houses pieces together Ginzburg’s fragments to rebuild her life from humble beginnings in Turin to the devastating grief of losing her husband in wartime Rome and her time in postwar London.
The story of one of Italy’s most significant cultural figures, she shows, is also the story of a nation splintered by displacement, precarity, betrayal and loss. Collapsing Houses renders Ginzburg in all her fractured complexity, tracing the powerful ways in which her legacy resonates today.
